Forum:Written style guidelines proposal
Hello, The Max Payne Wiki is growing and now comes the time for it to get specific policies and guidelines to help it acquire direction and consistency, all very much necessary to aid established editors and help direct newcomers. The policies are the spine, the central idea of any wiki, around which, and based upon which, the articles are built. There are many guidelines to create and there will come the time to develop them, but, for now, we can begin by addressing the one I feel is probably the most important: the written style policy using which articles should be written. The first proposals I want to introduce I divided into three parts here. The first part deals with the very generic written guidelines employed by virtually all wikis and I do not expect any opposition/suggestions concerning them, really. The next two are more delicate and specific and would require community consultation and their opinions. You are invited to share your thoughts about them on their respective comments sections below. In proposal pages like these, we will mold the guidelines, try to listen to the voices of any editors of the wiki, and, when a draft of a guideline is agreed upon by the majority, it will be put to a vote. If the majority votes in favor of the proposed policy, it will take effect, will be added to the mentioned policies and guidelines page and be enforced. And so, I encourage your comments! --TheBearPaw 01:09, December 6, 2011 (UTC) Update: Since no opposition (or suggestions) were met during the discussion phase of the proposed guidelines, the time for voting now follows. You can vote for or against each policy in its specific section below. Also, if you have no opinion one way or the other, you can vote as being "Neutral." --TheBearPaw 19:38, December 28, 2011 (UTC) =Written style proposal Nr. 1: General writing conventions= The following are very basic writing rules that are used actually even if a wiki has no such general regulations set up (as it is in this case), so accepting them and putting them up in the official page would simply help direct the inexperienced or new editors to a quick place where they could acquire this information. I propose these: General * The Max Payne Wiki uses all of the same writing conventions found in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. * In general, content should be written in a style appropriate for an encyclopedia. Descriptions should be clear and precise; speculations or uncertain facts should be avoided. Linking * Do not overlink. Generally, a page should be linked from a given article only once, on its first occurrence. Links may be repeated if the first link is far up the page or if the manner the word is used in makes it necessary (e.g. in summary lists). Formatting Bold * Bold the article name the first time it appears in the article itself. Any alternative names should also be bolded at their first occurrence. * Avoid using bold formatting for general emphasis. Italics * Italics should be used for the titles of books, games, films, ships. * Italics can be used for general emphasis, but should be used sparingly. Emphasis * Avoid using ALL CAPS. * Avoid using quotation marks for emphasis. * Avoid bolding words for general emphasis. * Avoid using double emphasis (e.g. combining bold and italics). * Use emphasis sparingly and only when necessary. Voting Do you support the Max Payne wiki accepting this "General writing conventions" guideline stated above? Vote by typing or or followed by your signature under the "Votes" line below. If you vote "No", please provide a reason why. The voting will last a week and will end at 19:40 January 4th, 2012. Do not edit other people's votes. Votes *--TheBearPaw 19:38, December 28, 2011 (UTC) *--Ilan xd 10:51, December 30, 2011 (UTC) Results The policy is passed unanimously. --TheBearPaw 22:08, January 4, 2012 (UTC) Your comments go here =Proposal Nr. 2: Perspective: In-universe= Now this is very important. I firmly believe we should accept the in-universe written style of the wiki, that is, describing people, events, places, weapons, etc. using the narrative perspective as if we ourselves lived in the Max Payne universe and are chronicling it. To begin with, most pages are already extensively using and are compiled with this approach, e.g. Valerie Winterson, or the Punchinello Manor. Writing in-universe gives greater impressiveness for both the editor and the reader and is, in my opinion, much more pleasant to experience. This is something very different from the Wikipedia approach. In Wikipedia, Max Payne would just be described as a "fictional character" and the "protagonist of the series", but here we would view and describe him as a detective, vigilante, and so on. The in-universe presentation is used very successfully by virtually all fictional franchise wikis I know and contribute to, most prominently I could mention Wookieepedia as an example. So how would that work and where would the non-universe info go? Again, I would give a random Wookieepedia article as an example. The introduction would be reserved for the in-universe info only. As would all the following sections describe the object with all known in-universe facts. But come the "Behind the scenes" section, the non-universe info is released. The "Appearances" section would then follow; it would be very useful and, frankly, just easier to have a constant "Appearances" section in one easy-to-find place where you would know you'd be able to find it, and not need to scan the whole text looking for it. With in-universe style, we would use "Max Payne" or "Mona Sax" instead of "the player" or "you," the in-universe date the game is set in instead of the game title in which the event takes place in, and so on. E.g.: "In 2001, Max Payne kills Frankie Niagra in Lupino's Hotel." and not "The player kills Frankie in Max Payne in the first chapter of Part II." And so, in the end, this style does not allow any information about ''Max Payne to disappear or be omitted'', but rather boils down to simply reorganizing the layout of articles. Update: An important detail I forgot to mention about this policy: it would only apply to in-universe articles, the non-universe ones, e.g. game, game chapter, developer, etc. would remain unchanged.--TheBearPaw 11:07, December 29, 2011 (UTC) Voting Do you support the Max Payne wiki accepting this "Perspective: In-universe" guideline stated above? Vote by typing or or followed by your signature under the "Votes" line below. If you vote "No", please provide a reason why. The voting will last a week and will end at 19:40 January 4th, 2012. Do not edit other people's votes. Votes --TheBearPaw 19:38, December 28, 2011 (UTC) --Ilan xd 18:33, December 30, 2011 (UTC) Results Results are pending. --TheBearPaw 22:08, January 4, 2012 (UTC) :Some time has passed now after the voting for this policy which had just two editors participating and resulted in 50% of approval and 50% of opposition. Since then, the user who was against this written style and I were engaged in a short discussion (Talk pages 1 & 2) which ended with him accepting to write in-universe. Continuing to support my expressed view that "The wiki is in danger of chaos because no style is authorized, anyone could write in any way and be right as there are no set-up rules against it. One article would be written in one style, and one in the other and we would have to respect both authors, that would just be very counterproductive," I take it upon myself as a bureaucrat of the wiki to pass this policy. --TheBearPaw 23:28, February 26, 2012 (UTC) Your comments here =Proposal Nr. 3: Tense: Present= As an add-on to the in-universe style writing, I strongly believe we should use the present tense to write articles and not the past. That is, as the Max Payne games take place in different in-universe years, depending on the game, any event could be viewed to be either in past, present, or future. And so, we would write: "Mona Sax hunts Angelo Punchinello in 2001. She dies in 2003." instead of "Mona Sax was hunting Punchinello in 2001. She died in 2003." This would also require the removal of any "deceased character" categories or similar ones, as, depending on the time the game is set in, that character may still be very much alive. The only exception to this rule would be something relating to events which took place before any of the Max Payne games. Voting Do you support the Max Payne wiki accepting this "Tense: Present" guideline stated above? Vote by typing or or followed by your signature under the "Votes" line below. If you vote "No", please provide a reason why. The voting will last a week and will end at 19:40 January 4th, 2012. Do not edit other people's votes. Votes * --TheBearPaw 19:38, December 28, 2011 (UTC) * --Ilan xd 16:06, January 2, 2012 (UTC) Results 50% of support, however, 0% of opposition; the policy is passed. --TheBearPaw 22:08, January 4, 2012 (UTC) Your comments here